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He looked it over for a long time, turning it in his hands, studying every nook and V cranny, and finally said in a very low voice. ![]() We shook hands and walked into the garage, I proudly showed him the immaculate Flying V. ![]() He was a little antsy, but that’s how he’d been the last time I met him. I heard him drive up and walked out to meet him. I had the garage open and the guitar sitting on my dads’ big workbench. 42nd and Taravel, heart of the Sunset district, beautiful summers day around noon, temps in the 70s. I set a meeting with the fella who had his V stolen in San Francisco, at my parents house. Well I’m countin my chickens, their little toenails and any other chicken paraphernalia that may be applicable, I’m so sure my ship has come in I keep going down to the Marina and gazing longingly out at the horizon. “Fine, if my client likes it, Allstate will buy it for him!” Apparently the client owned a pretty big company, many hundred employees, did all his biz with Allstate, personal, business, employee, auto, fleet of trucks, the whole enchilada. that it was in fabulous shape and it could be had for……… $30,000!! The guy never batted an eye. I told the insurance broker I had located one of “the 75 ever made…… Gibson…… Korina Freakin Flying V’s,……. The guy didn’t want to sell it, but I said, “name a ridiculous price” and he said $20,000 (pricey in ’81). We parted and I called the insurance broker the next day, because…….because….because I knew where there was a V. He also has a Polaroid picture of an oil painting that hung over his fireplace, of him playing the Flying V!!! Now we’re freakin talkin kids!! What kind of guitar?……….,a blonde 1959 Gibson Flying V. ![]() He brings with him, a Gibson promotional magazine from 1959, with a full page picture of a local music store’s front window display that won “best promotion” by suspending a Flying V with fishing line over a big moonscape, with planets and sputniks in the air surrounding it, actually very well done, pretty cool for 1959, well friends and neighbors that was the exact guitar that the client lost, he bought it new from the store, and had it ever since. His home was robbed of all kinds of valuables that he was getting replaced but the only thing he was really depressed about was the guitar, and he was really down, kids. He looks and talks almost exactly like, Smokey and the Bandit co-star, and Nashville, super picker, Jerry Reed. I arrange to meet with the client in Oakland one day soon there after, most likely at Leo’s Music. I start asking all kinds of specific identifying questions, and the agent finally sez “I’ll just put you in direct contact with the client and you can meet with him, and see which model flying V he had stolen.” He tells me that his client has lost a very valuable old guitar, can I help? I ask what kind of instrument it was and he tells me a Gibson Flying V. So one day I get a call form a guy who ran a big Allstate office in the East Bay. The music stores I had worked for apparently didn’t want to deal with that stuff after I left, so I kinda inherited the biz. Client got a new guitar, insurance company paid out less than expected, Stapes made some pocket change. But, I could get ’em for 40% off retail ($600), brand new, sell ’em to the insurance company for 25 to 30% off ($700-750) and keep the change, everybody was happy. If an insurance customer had a 70’s ES335 stolen, for instance, the list price (and insured value) was around $1,000, the list price of a new 335 back then. ![]() I had made the contacts when I worked for Don Wehrs’ Music City & Leo’s Music in Oakland (a vast treasure trove of Gibsons, Rickys, De Angelicos and Fenders that we will never see again). Zion Hospital, playing in my original band “Billy Blastoff & the Retro Rockets” dealing guitars, collecting guitars, etc.Īnother little side line I had picked up was doing “insurance replacement” work with a couple of insurance companies. I’m pretty sure I was working in the computer room at Mt. In the early 80’s I was still living in San Francisco.
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